Rule Book & policies

Part A — Rules common to all publications

The rules in this Part apply to every publication the Publisher handles, whether a set of conference proceedings or a journal. The two Parts that follow add requirements specific to each. Where a rule in Part B or Part C is stricter than a rule here, the stricter rule governs.

A1 Governing standards and interpretation

This rule book sets the conditions under which the Publisher will accept, review, produce, and disseminate scholarly content. It is written to be adopted by any publisher and to sit comfortably alongside the international standards that reviewers, indexers, and libraries already expect.

The Publisher aligns its practice with four reference frameworks: the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), applied across disciplines; the content-selection criteria used by major abstracting and indexing services, of which Scopus is taken as the benchmark; and the joint Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Where this document is silent, those frameworks fill the gap, and the more protective reading prevails.

The words MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, and MAY carry the meanings given in Appendix 1. A requirement written as MUST is a condition of publication; failure to meet it is grounds for the Publisher to decline or withdraw.

A2 Standing to publish

A conference or journal earns the right to be published, and keeps it only for as long as the conditions in this rule book are met. Acceptance of an application is never automatic and never guaranteed by payment. The Publisher evaluates each request on the integrity of the event or title, not on the fee attached to it.

The Publisher will decline, or later withdraw, any title or event that shows the markers of predatory or deceptive practice: fabricated editorial boards, guaranteed acceptance, concealment of fees, misuse of metrics, spoofed indexing claims, or solicitation that misrepresents scope or standing. This bar applies before money changes hands and continues to apply throughout the relationship.

A3 Publication ethics

Every participant — organizer, editor, reviewer, and author — is bound by the COPE Core Practices. The Publisher treats the following ten as the ethical floor beneath all of its titles and events:

• Allegations of misconduct — a defined route to raise, examine, and resolve concerns about published or submitted work, applied consistently whoever the author is.
• Authorship and contributorship — clear, agreed criteria for who is named and in what order (see A4).
• Complaints and appeals — a published mechanism for challenging editorial decisions and conduct (see A10).
• Conflicts of interest — declaration and management of competing interests by authors, reviewers, and editors (see A8).
• Data and reproducibility — honest reporting, availability of underlying data where feasible, and enough method to allow a competent reader to reproduce the work.
• Ethical oversight — proper handling of consent, vulnerable populations, animal and human subjects, and research on sensitive material.
• Intellectual property — respect for copyright, licensing, and prior rights, and correct attribution of reused material (see A11).
• Journal and event management — competent editorial systems, records, and governance appropriate to the title or event.
• Peer review processes — described publicly, applied fairly, and documented (see A5).
• Post-publication discussion and corrections — a willingness to correct the record openly through corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern (see A9).

A4 Authorship and contributorship

Authorship records who did the work and who answers for it. The Publisher applies the four ICMJE conditions: an author must have made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, acquisition, or analysis of the work; must have drafted or critically revised it; must have approved the final version; and must agree to be accountable for its integrity. Everyone who meets all four is entitled to be listed. Anyone who meets none should be acknowledged, not credited as an author.

Guest authorship (crediting someone who did not contribute) and ghost authorship (omitting someone who did) are both misconduct. Changes to the author list after submission — additions, removals, reordering — require the written agreement of every author, and the corresponding author must obtain and retain it.

Generative AI tools MUST NOT be listed as authors. A tool cannot take responsibility for the work or approve its final form. Any substantive use of such a tool in producing the content MUST be disclosed in the manuscript, with enough detail for a reader to understand what it did.

A5 Peer review

Peer review is the mechanism that lets a reader trust the work without repeating it. Each title and event MUST describe its review process publicly and then follow the description it has published. A process that exists only on paper is a failure of this rule as surely as no process at all.

Reviewers MUST judge the work, not the author, and MUST treat every manuscript as confidential. A reviewer with a competing interest, or without the competence to assess the submission, MUST decline and say why. Editors and chairs MUST record who reviewed what, the recommendations received, and the basis of the decision, and MUST retain those records for the period set in A12.

An editor or chair MUST NOT decide on a submission in which they hold a personal, financial, or academic interest; the submission MUST be handled by an independent colleague of equal standing.

A6 Originality and similarity

Submitted work MUST be original and MUST NOT be under consideration elsewhere at the same time. Reuse of the author's own earlier text without citation (text recycling) is treated as a form of duplication and is judged on the same scale as reuse of another's.

Every submission MUST pass an automated similarity check before acceptance. The Publisher reads the report, not only the headline percentage, because a single heavily copied passage matters more than a diffuse score. As a working guide, an overall similarity index above 20 percent, or any single source above 5 percent excluding correctly quoted and attributed material, triggers editorial scrutiny and, where warranted, revision or rejection. Quotations, references, and standard methodological phrasing are discounted before the index is judged.

A confirmed case of plagiarism, duplicate submission, or data fabrication is handled under A9 and A10 and may lead to the sanctions in A15.

A7 Research integrity, consent, and data

Research involving human participants MUST have appropriate ethical approval and informed consent, and the manuscript MUST say so and name the approving body. Research involving animals MUST comply with the relevant welfare standards and declare them. Studies that touch identifiable individuals MUST protect their privacy.

Authors SHOULD make the data underlying their findings available to the extent that law, consent, and confidentiality allow, and SHOULD state where it can be found. Methods MUST be reported in enough detail for a competent peer to reproduce the work.

A8 Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest is any relationship that a reasonable reader would want to know about when weighing the work — financial, employment, personal, or academic. Authors, reviewers, editors, and organizers MUST declare theirs. Declaration is not an admission of wrongdoing; concealment is the wrong. Declared interests are managed by recusal, disclosure in the published record, or independent handling, as the case requires.

A9 Corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern

The published record is corrected openly, never quietly altered. An honest error is fixed by a correction that is linked to the original and explains what changed. Work that is fundamentally unreliable — through error or misconduct — is retracted, with a retraction notice that states the reason and who initiated it, following the COPE retraction guidelines. Where a serious concern is credible but not yet resolved, the Publisher may issue an expression of concern while it investigates.

The original article is not removed. It remains available, clearly marked, so the record stays complete and citations still resolve.

A10 Complaints, appeals, and misconduct

Anyone may raise a concern about a decision or about conduct. The Publisher acknowledges a complaint promptly, examines it against the evidence, and gives the people involved a fair chance to respond. An author may appeal an editorial decision once, on stated grounds; the appeal is judged by someone who did not make the original decision.

Allegations of misconduct are investigated regardless of the seniority of those involved. The Publisher may consult the author's institution, correct or retract the record, and apply sanctions under A15. Bad-faith or retaliatory complaints are themselves treated as misconduct.

A11 Copyright, licensing, and open access

The licence under which content is published MUST be stated on the work itself and MUST be settled before publication. Where content is published open access, the Publisher's default licence is Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), under which authors retain copyright and readers may reuse with attribution. A different licence MAY be agreed where a funder or community requires it, provided it is no less open than the stated default unless the author expressly chooses otherwise.

Authors MUST hold the rights to everything they submit, including figures, tables, and quoted material reused from others, and MUST provide permission for third-party material where the licence does not already cover it.

A12 Identifiers, metadata, and preservation

Every published item MUST carry a persistent identifier — a registered DOI — with complete, accurate metadata deposited to the DOI registration agency so the work is citable and discoverable. Journals MUST hold a valid ISSN; proceedings MUST carry an ISBN or an ISSN as appropriate to the series. Authors SHOULD be identified by ORCID.

Published content MUST be preserved so that it survives the Publisher: through a recognized digital-preservation arrangement and retained editorial and review records. Peer-review and decision records MUST be kept for no less than five years after publication.

A13 Indexing and discoverability

The Publisher builds every title and event to be eligible for reputable abstracting and indexing services, and never claims an indexing status it does not hold. Indexing is a consequence of meeting the standards in this rule book, not a promise made to authors. Claims about coverage, metrics, or impact MUST be accurate and current.

A14 Confidentiality and data protection

Submissions, reviews, and the personal data of authors and reviewers are handled in confidence and used only for the purposes of review, production, and publication. Personal data is processed in line with applicable data-protection law and retained no longer than needed for those purposes and for the record-keeping this rule book requires.

A15 Non-compliance and sanctions

Where a rule is broken, the Publisher's response is proportionate to the breach and to whether it was honest or deliberate. The available measures form a ladder, and the Publisher may enter it at any rung the facts justify:

• a request for correction or revision within a stated period;
• a correction, retraction, or expression of concern on the published record (A9);
• suspension of production or of an event's proceedings until the breach is cured;
• referral to the author's or organizer's institution or funder;
• a ban, for a stated period, on further submissions or events from the individuals responsible;
• termination of the publishing arrangement, and withdrawal of affected content where its integrity cannot be assured.

Sanctions are recorded, notified to those affected, and open to appeal under A10.

Part B — Conference proceedings

This Part governs the publication of conference proceedings — a collection of peer-reviewed papers arising from a scholarly event. It applies together with Part A. It does not lower any requirement in Part A; it adds the ones peculiar to running an event.

B1 Scope

Proceedings are published as a defined collection tied to a single event or a numbered series of events. Each collection has a scope, a committee that stands behind it, and a review process that every included paper has passed. A collection that is merely a set of papers assembled for a fee, without a genuine event and a genuine committee, does not qualify and will not be published.

B2 Eligibility of the event

To have its proceedings published, an event MUST be a genuine scholarly meeting with an identifiable organizing body, a defined scientific scope, a named committee, and an announced programme. The following are conditions of eligibility:

• a real event with a fixed scope, dates, and venue or a declared virtual format;
• an organizing body that can be identified and held responsible, with lawful standing to run the event;
• a scientific programme built from submitted work that has been reviewed, not invited wholesale or assembled without review;
• a committee structure meeting B5, with named individuals whose consent to serve has been obtained;
• no guarantee of acceptance to any author, and no acceptance conditioned on payment;
• accurate representation of the event's scope, standing, committee, and any indexing expectation in all announcements and calls.

B3 Application and registration

The organizing body applies to publish before the review process opens, and in any case before any acceptance is issued. The application records the event's identity, scope, dates, expected volume of submissions, the committee and its members, the planned review model, and the financial arrangement under B8. The Publisher reviews the application against this rule book and either registers the event, asks for changes, or declines with reasons.

Registration fixes the terms for that event. A material change afterwards — to scope, committee, review model, or scale — MUST be notified and MAY require re-approval.

B4 Scientific quality and scope

Every paper accepted into the proceedings MUST fall within the event's declared scope and MUST meet the usual standard of a conference paper: an original contribution, soundly motivated, adequately supported, and of enough interest to justify its length. Reviewers judge conference papers as conference papers — shorter and more preliminary than journal articles — but the floor of originality and soundness does not move.

Papers of low scientific standard MUST NOT be accepted, whatever the acceptance rate that produces. The committee is accountable for what appears under the event's name.

B5 Committee structure and governance

An event MUST have a committee that separates the running of the meeting from the judging of the science, so that no single person both solicits and approves the papers. The minimum structure is set out in the table below; larger events add tracks and sub-committees, and one person MAY hold more than one role only where independence of review is preserved.

Committee members MUST be real, consenting, appropriately qualified people. Listing anyone without their agreement is misconduct under Part A.

B6 Peer review for proceedings

Every paper in the proceedings MUST be peer-reviewed before acceptance. The Publisher requires, as a minimum:

• at least two independent reviewers per paper, none of whom is an author of that paper or holds a competing interest in it;
• review against written criteria, returning a clear recommendation and comments usable by the author;
• acceptance only where the reviewers give clear support; a paper that no reviewer supports MUST NOT be accepted;
• decisions taken by a committee member independent of the paper's authors;
• a complete record of assignments, reviews, and decisions, retained under A12;
• a signed peer-review declaration from the Programme or Publication Chair describing exactly how review was conducted, which is published with the proceedings.

The declaration is a statement of fact. Certifying a review process that did not happen is serious misconduct and ends the publishing arrangement.

B7 Originality and similarity for proceedings

A6 applies in full. Because conference papers often build on the authors' earlier work, the committee pays particular attention to text recycling and to duplicate submission across parallel events. Every paper is similarity-checked before acceptance, and the report is read against the guidance in A6.

B8 Financial liabilities of the organizer

The financial relationship is settled in writing before publication and is carried by an identifiable, financially liable party — the organizing institution or its authorized representative — not by an individual acting informally. The arrangement MUST state, at minimum:

• the publication charge and exactly what it covers, with no fee concealed and no charge levied merely for submitting or for a favourable decision;
• the party financially liable for the charge, and, where more than one institution shares liability, each one's share;
• the point at which the charge becomes payable, and the currency, taxes, and any withholding that apply;
• the treatment of cancellation, postponement, and withdrawal of the event, and the refund position in each case;
• the position on a paper withdrawn or rejected after a charge is raised;
• that acceptance is never contingent on payment, and payment never secures acceptance.

A financially liable institution MUST confirm its liability through a signed undertaking before production begins (see B10 and Appendix 5). Fees, and what they buy, MUST be disclosed to authors before they submit.

B9 Deadlines and production timeline

An event MUST publish a schedule and hold to it, because authors, reviewers, and the Publisher all plan around it. The Publisher works to a standard timeline, which an event adopts and populates with its own dates:

Slippage that threatens the integrity of review is never an acceptable saving of time. A schedule may move; the requirement that every paper be properly reviewed does not.

B10 Signatories and declarations

Responsibility for the proceedings rests with named people who sign for it. Before the proceedings are published, the Publisher MUST hold:

• an organizer undertaking, signed by the General / Conference Chair, confirming the event's eligibility (B2) and accepting responsibility for compliance with this rule book;
• a peer-review declaration, signed by the Technical Programme or Publication Chair, describing how every paper was reviewed (B6);
• a financial-liability undertaking, signed by an authorized officer of the financially liable institution (B8);
• author agreements and licences for every included paper (A11), together with any third-party permissions.

A signatory MUST have authority to bind the body they sign for. The Publisher MAY verify that authority and MAY decline to proceed until it is satisfied.

B11 Camera-ready, formatting, and metadata

Camera-ready papers MUST follow the Publisher's template and MUST be complete, proofread, and free of the defects that reviewers asked to be fixed. Each paper MUST arrive with accurate metadata — title, authors and affiliations, abstract, keywords, and references — because that metadata becomes the citation and the index entry. The Publication Chair is responsible for the quality of what is submitted; the Publisher is not a proofreader of last resort.

B12 Post-event obligations

After publication, the organizing body remains responsible for the integrity of the proceedings. It MUST cooperate with any correction, retraction, or investigation under Part A, respond to post-publication concerns, and keep its review and decision records available for the period in A12. A series that returns for a further edition is assessed afresh against this rule book; past publication does not entitle a future one.

Part C — Journals

This Part governs the publication of journals — periodicals that publish peer-reviewed articles on a continuing basis. It applies together with Part A. A journal is a standing commitment rather than a single event, so the requirements here concern governance, regularity, and the durability of quality over time.

C1 Scope

A journal is a continuing title with a defined scope, a stable editorial structure, and a published schedule. It carries a single ISSN, builds a citable back-file, and holds itself to a consistent standard from one issue to the next. A title that cannot sustain regular, reviewed publication is not ready to launch.

C2 Eligibility to launch or publish a journal

Before a journal is published, it MUST demonstrate that it can meet, and keep meeting, the criteria that reputable indexers apply. Taking the Scopus content-selection criteria as the benchmark, a journal MUST have:

• a clear aims-and-scope statement and a consistent editorial policy, publicly available;
• a publicly described peer-review process that it actually operates (A5, C5);
• a valid, registered ISSN;
• a publicly available publication-ethics and malpractice statement (A3);
• content relevant to and readable by an international audience, with English titles and abstracts at minimum;
• a credible plan for regular publication without interruption (C6);
• a stable online presence with complete content and accurate metadata (A12).

These are entry conditions, not aspirations. A journal that does not yet meet them is developed until it does, rather than published in the hope of meeting them later.

C3 Editorial governance and committee structure

A journal MUST have an editorial structure that makes one person clearly responsible for scientific quality while keeping decisions independent of commercial pressure. The minimum structure is:

Board members MUST be real, consenting, and active; a decorative board is a transparency breach under Part A. The Editor-in-Chief MUST be free to reject a paper on scientific grounds regardless of any financial consequence.

C4 Aims, scope, and scientific standard

The journal publishes within its stated scope and holds every article to a consistent standard of originality, rigour, and contribution. Scope may evolve, but it is stated plainly and applied honestly, so that authors and readers know what the title is for. An article outside scope is declined however strong it is, and referred elsewhere where possible.

C5 Peer review model and requirements

The journal MUST describe its review model — single-anonymous, double-anonymous, or open — and operate it consistently. The Publisher requires, as a minimum:

• at least two independent expert reviewers per article, with a third sought where they disagree;
• reviewers and handling editors free of competing interests in the submission (A5, A8);
• decisions made by an editor, never by the number of reports alone, and never by the Publisher;
• reasons given to authors, with reviewer comments, and a single route of appeal (A10);
• a complete, retained record of reviews and decisions (A12);
• editorial independence: no paper is accepted to secure a fee, and none is rejected to avoid one.

C6 Frequency, regularity, and structure

A journal MUST publish on an announced schedule and keep to it; unexplained gaps are one of the surest signs of a title in trouble, and indexers treat them as such. Whether the journal publishes in discrete issues or continuously through the year, it MUST maintain a steady flow of content, a coherent volume-and-issue structure, and a complete, navigable archive. Article-level identifiers and metadata MUST be assigned as content appears (A12).

C7 Financial model and liabilities

A journal's charges MUST be transparent, justified, and separated from editorial decisions. Where the journal levies an article-processing charge, the arrangement MUST state:

• the charge and exactly what it covers, disclosed before submission, with no hidden fees;
• the point at which it becomes payable — which MUST be after acceptance, never as a price of submission or of a favourable decision;
• any waiver or discount policy, applied by clear criteria and without influence on the editorial outcome;
• the party responsible for payment, and the currency, taxes, and withholding that apply;
• that the ability or willingness to pay has no bearing on whether an article is accepted.

A journal MUST NOT operate on any basis that ties acceptance to payment. Editorial and financial functions are kept apart, and the Editor-in-Chief's decisions are made without regard to the fee.

C8 Editorial deadlines and turnaround

Authors are entitled to timely, predictable handling. The journal adopts turnaround targets, publishes them, and reports against them. The Publisher's standard targets are:

Targets are commitments to communicate, not licences to rush review. Where a target cannot be met, the author is told.

C9 Signatories and governance undertakings

Before a journal is published, and as a continuing condition, the Publisher MUST hold:

• an Editor-in-Chief undertaking, accepting responsibility for editorial standards and independence and for compliance with this rule book;
• a publishing agreement with the owning body, setting out the financial arrangement (C7) and the party liable for any charges;
• confirmation that every named board member has consented to serve;
• author agreements and licences for every published article (A11).

The Editor-in-Chief undertaking is renewed on any change of Editor-in-Chief, and the Publisher MAY require confirmation of continued board consent at each periodic review (C11).

C10 Indexing readiness and continuous quality

The journal is built and run to remain eligible for reputable indexing throughout its life, not only at launch. It sustains editorial-board diversity, citation performance appropriate to its field, regular publication, and a strong online presence — the dimensions on which selective indexers judge a title. The Publisher never guarantees a specific indexing outcome and never claims coverage the journal has not secured (A13).

C11 Continuous obligations and periodic review

A journal's compliance is assessed not once but continuously. The Publisher reviews each title periodically against this rule book — its ethics practice, review records, regularity, board activity, and financial transparency. A title that drifts below the standard is given a defined period to recover; one that cannot, or will not, may have publication suspended or ended under A15. Continued publication is earned issue by issue.

Appendices

Appendix 1 Normative language and definitions

The following keywords and terms carry these meanings throughout this rule book.

MUST / MUST NOT

An absolute requirement or prohibition, and a condition of publication.

SHOULD / SHOULD NOT

A strong expectation; departures are permitted only for good reason, which SHOULD be recorded.

MAY

A genuine option, at the discretion of the party named.

Publisher

The organization engaged to review, produce, and disseminate the content and to administer this rule book.

Organizer / Organizing body

The institution or committee responsible for a conference and its proceedings.

Editor-in-Chief

The person with final, independent editorial responsibility for a journal.

Proceedings

A defined, peer-reviewed collection of papers arising from a scholarly event.

Journal

A continuing periodical publishing peer-reviewed articles under a single ISSN.

Peer review

Independent expert assessment of a submission against stated criteria before a decision is taken.

Competing interest

Any relationship a reasonable reader would want disclosed when weighing the work or a decision on it.

APC

Article-processing charge: a fee, payable after acceptance, for publishing an accepted article.

Appendix 2 Consolidated committee roles

The roles required by Part B (conferences) and Part C (journals), gathered for reference. Independence of review from solicitation and from finance is the constant across both.

Appendix 3 Similarity thresholds and sanction ladder

The similarity guidance from A6 and the sanction ladder from A15, set out for quick reference. Thresholds are triggers for judgement, not automatic verdicts; the report is always read in full.

Sanction ladder (A15), applied proportionately:

Appendix 4 Standard schedules

Template timelines from B9 and C8, to be populated with real dates by each event and title. The targets are defaults; an event or journal may set tighter ones, but not looser ones that put review at risk.

Conference proceedings timeline (from B9)

Journal turnaround targets (from C8)

Appendix 5 Declarations and signatory templates

The undertakings required before publication (B10, C9). Each is signed by a person with authority to bind the body named, and is retained by the Publisher.

Organizer undertaking (conference)

Signed by the General / Conference Chair. Confirms the event's eligibility under B2, the accuracy of committee and scope information, and acceptance of responsibility for compliance with this rule book.

Peer-review declaration (conference)

Signed by the Technical Programme or Publication Chair. States, per the actual process used, how many reviewers assessed each paper, how reviewers were selected, how decisions were made, and that no accepted paper lacked reviewer support.

Financial-liability undertaking (conference)

Signed by an authorized officer of the financially liable institution. States the charge, the share of liability where more than one institution is liable, and confirms that acceptance was not conditioned on payment.

Editor-in-Chief undertaking (journal)

Signed by the Editor-in-Chief. Accepts final editorial responsibility and independence, and compliance with this rule book. Renewed on any change of Editor-in-Chief.

Publishing agreement (journal)

Between the Publisher and the owning body. Sets out the financial arrangement under C7 and the party liable for charges.

Author agreement and licence (both)

Signed by the corresponding author for each paper. Confirms authorship and originality, grants the agreed licence, and provides any third-party permissions.

Appendix 6 Standards this rule book aligns to

The external frameworks referenced in Part A, provided so that a reader can consult the source. Where any is updated, this rule book is read in light of the current version and revised at the next review.

COPE Core Practices

Committee on Publication Ethics — the ethical basis of A3 and the corrections and misconduct rules in A9–A10.

ICMJE authorship criteria

The four-part test for authorship applied in A4.

Scopus content-selection criteria

The benchmark eligibility and quality dimensions applied to journals in C2 and C10.

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

The joint COPE / DOAJ / OASPA / WAME principles underlying A2, A13, and the transparency rules throughout.

Conference-proceedings peer-review practice (IEEE, IOP and equivalents)

The basis of the minimum review requirements and the peer-review declaration in B6.

DOI / Crossref, ISSN, ISBN, ORCID

The identifier and metadata requirements in A12.